Mace's Uncertain Political Future
Rep. Nancy Mace Faces Uncertain Political Future After Finishing Last in SC Primary
Rep. Nancy Mace finished last in South Carolina's Republican primary for governor on June 9, 2026, taking just 11.6% of the vote in a five-candidate race, according to The Associated Press. The result ends her time in elective office — she gave up her congressional seat to run and will be out of Congress by January 2027.
Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette led the field with 29.3%, followed by Attorney General Alan Wilson at 26.0%. Both advanced to a runoff, Knewz reported. Mace, once a rising star in the GOP, leaves behind a decade of volatile politics and no clear next step.
Epstein Files Fight Cost Mace Trump's Backing
Mace's campaign was built around one explosive issue: forcing the release of Jeffrey Epstein's files. In November 2025, she was one of just four Republicans — alongside Reps. Thomas Massie, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene — to sign a discharge petition forcing a House vote on the documents, according to TIME. Trump publicly opposed the move and pulled his endorsement.
Trump later signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law but threw his "complete and total endorsement" behind Evette just two weeks before the primary. Mace said the fight cost her politically but was worth it. "I voted to release the Epstein files and lost some support for that," she told The Guardian. "I chose to stand on principle... and apparently, I chose wrong if the goal was winning an election."
Nativist Attacks on Rival Backfired Badly
Mace made her campaign more divisive in May 2026. She introduced a resolution to change the Constitution so that only "natural born" citizens could serve in Congress or as federal judges, according to Common Dreams. She also targeted opponent Rom Reddy, a naturalized citizen and businessman who finished fourth with 14.8%.
At a June 1 campaign stop in Greenville, Mace said: "I didn't come out of a slum in India." Reddy fired back. "Ms. Mace has publicly called me a 'foreigner' despite the fact that I have been a naturalized American citizen longer than she has been alive," he said, per Charlotte Stories. Rep. Pramila Jayapal called the constitutional proposal "racist legislation that denies the very history of a country shaped by immigrants."
Mace's Fundraising Collapsed Before a Single Vote Was Cast
The numbers told the story early. Mace raised just $3,700 in individual donations during the third quarter of 2025, according to Quiver Quantitative. With no money, she had no TV ads. Her campaign leaned on sporadic social media posts instead, The Associated Press noted. The lack of air presence in a statewide race was a near-fatal disadvantage.
Massie, her fellow Epstein-file ally, lost his own primary in Kentucky weeks earlier. Marjorie Taylor Greene had already resigned from Congress. That left Lauren Boebert as the only one of the "Epstein Four" still in office, per The 19th News. Mace's defeat completed a sweep that analysts called a "primary bloodbath" for Republicans who broke with Trump on the issue.
Mace Endorses Her Old Enemy in Stunning Reversal
One day after her loss, Mace endorsed Alan Wilson for the runoff — the same man she had spent two years attacking. She had accused his office of dismissing 92% of child sex abuse cases in her district and called his office a "complete failure," according to Newsweek. Her reversal drew sharp criticism from both allies and opponents.
The pivot underscored what analysts described as a career defined by whiplash. She courted Trump, then crossed him. She attacked Wilson, then backed him. Without a congressional seat to return to and her gubernatorial bid finished, Mace's political future is, by nearly every account, deeply uncertain, The Associated Press reported.
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